smooooth

Yesterday, with my friend Michelle visiting me, we went to visit my old Arab grandmother in Misungwi town. She has been away with health problems for several months but has returned with lots of energy, though not as many stories ABOUT her health problems as I expected to hear. While we were there, we got some really, REALLY nice juice - mango!! Tis the season, back in the states the season of cold blistery snowy wind-chill conditions, here it's still raining and the mangoes are increasingly abundant and increasingly cheap. Not a bad way to leave.

So Michelle [check out her blog, link at the right, and congrats to her since she is officially done with her PC service!] was here for about a week and it was nice to share some of my experiences in my town with another volunteer. I don't get a whole lot of guests. And boy did we hit the ground running, the first day she got here we went to a wedding in a nearby town. It was scheduled to start [the party] at 6pm, and wedding parties here follow a VERY strictly organized schedule, with time allotted for greetings, gifts, cake cutting, etc. That is, everything is planned down to the minute when it is supposed to take place.

Of course, the kicker is that this is Tanzania. So most of the guests arrived around 8pm, a good 2 hours late, and the party didn't actually get started until 10pm. UGH. We were both very tired, her moreso due to the travels, but once it started it was pretty nice. The happy couple, of course, looked miserable, since that's what brides and grooms are supposed to look like here. But the GUESTS, we had fun, drinking soda and beer, clinking glasses and giving gifts [everytime you go up to the head table to give a gift or something, you have to sort of 'dance' your way up to local TZ music]. The food was nice, although it was at about 1:30 am, and there was a bit of dancing. I didn't know a whole lot of people there, but the groom is a good friend of mine and I have worked closely with him on several projects, so he was happy to see me there and I was happy to see him. Granted he's lived with his wife for 15 years and they have 3 kids, but they'd never actually had a wedding. One of the guests described this as 'fixing things up', as in, he had sort of stolen his wife and now he was setting things right. Oh yeah, they got 3 cows and some goats and chickens in addition to dishes and cloth as wedding gifts.

The next few days we hung out in Misungwi, greeting my friends and checking out all a small TZ town has to offer. Not a lot, but we had fun. She helped me teach my last period at the Secondary school [we reviewed STDs and then watched a powerful, GRAPHIC, but I think very educational video on STDs which shows up-close shots of syphillis, chancroid, gonorrhea, etc]. We also went to the TTC for my last period there, where I taught the most whirlwind lesson on condoms ever, but despite the rush it went well and I think they got something out of it, or at least I hope ONE person at least got ONE little thing out of it, I think that would be enough for me to be content.

The week before Michelle came I finished up my MEMA kwa Vijana seminars with AMREF. I wrote a bit about this last week, but feel the need to elaborate a bit. I stayed mostly with the teachers who teach in the primary schools right in Misungwi town, so it is nice now seeing them around on the street and exchanging greetings and ideas. I was a bit of a firecracker during our lessons, and I must say that 2 years of experience here that will be shortly winding down has led to me boiling up pretty quickly and being pretty open about a lot of topics I would previously have danced lightly around. But it's good, I think, for an outsider to give his or her thoughts every once in a while, because otherwise we just take for granted the environment we live in, and don't ask questions like 'why is it this way' or 'why don't we change this?'. For example, many of the teachers were complaining that American/Western culture, namely clothing and music and videos. Yes, I agreed, the culture is not as conservative as it is here. People get divorced all the time, women where short skirts, many of us watch porno. But, for example, grown American men RARELY have sexual relationships with 14 year old girls. Here, that is still considered deviant and gross and inappropriate, but is certainly not unheard of.

So yeah, I've been running into them now and some of the teachers, especially the younger ones who just finished their trainings, are really fun to talk to. We talk about the difficulties facing them in their schools and classrooms, many of which I've written about before [student numbers, lack of facilities, lack of resources, lack of books, um, even RAIN messes things up since they have steel roofing with no ceiling boards]. Many would like to come visit me in the states, and requests for sponsorships and addresses and contacts have grown exponentially as people [not just teachers] are aware that I am close to leaving.

GOTTA GO. I need to buy new pants, all my pants are SHOT and I want to look presentable for my last few weeks here. I am getting some kick-ass African shirts hand-tailored for me, so that will complete the ensemble. The only problem is that pants here are hard to find as there are not exactly any department stores, and certainly no price tags, so everyone tries to rip me off. Thus a friend of mine [who just called me] is meeting me in town to take me shopping. Plus, those of you who know me know that I hate clothes shopping, but 'inanibidi' that is 'it is making me', it being some condition like, for example, the disgustingness of my current wardrobe.

PEACE


ps. my cat is apparently NOT a beneficiary of my lessons on lifeskills, hiv/aids, and family planning. for the second time in i swear 4 months, she has had kittens. only two this time. so now i have 3 cats to try to get rid of before i leave. nice.

pps. i don't brag a lot, certainly not as often as I could because, let's be honest, i'm good at a lot of things and especially here in Tanzania i'm pretty freaking special. But i have to today - there was a really really drunk guy in the market a few days ago, in Misungwi, when michelle and I went to buy meat at the butcher. though i'm not sure of the connection between language and masculinity, this guy kept repeating over and over, "that guy - listen to him. he knows swahili. that guy, he's a MAN. he's a MAN, a real MAN. listen to him."

so among the names i've been called here: sir, doctor, 'real man', father. lots of respect. which i ain't gonna get when i get back home....